Louder than Words

Is This The Life We Really Want?

Perfect Sense

I'll start this Roger
Waters solo history in 1983 and pretend The
Body soundtrack (1970) never happened (it's definitively worth
checking out and not only for the Waters compositions, if you don't mind
the seventies tomfoolery).

The
Final Cut (1983) was issued as a Pink
Floyd album but is considered a virtual Roger Waters solo work with
some guitar solos by David
Gilmour and occasional percussion by that playboy drummer.
Originally intended as a Wall spin-off it grew into a political
manifesto against the Falklands crisis. And if that wasn't already
mind-boggling enough Waters also recycled some early-Wall melodies that
never made it on the double album because they weren't considered good
enough by Bob Ezrin and co.

The Final Cut set the standard for his future solo projects that
invariably contain a few good to excellent tracks, but unfortunately
also a lot of monotonous rubble. Most of them are also packaged in
puke-ugly covers.

The
Pros And Cons of Hitchhiking (1984) is the third part in the Wall
series, it even borrows some musical themes from that one. But just like
in the original Planet
Of The Apes franchise quality gradually degrades from sequel to
sequel, from solo project to solo project.

Blowing in the Wind

Waters' contribution to the When
The Wind Blows soundtrack (1986) takes a complete vinyl side. It
contains roughly 12 minutes of experimental synth drones, sound effects
and movie samples, sandwiched between one excellent and one just OK
song. Towers
of Faith has Waters at his best with vitriolic and sarcastic nags at
the Pope and his former bandmates: "this band is MY band…" It’s a pity
the track was put on a rather obscure soundtrack of a rather obscure
movie, not the last time this would happen with his songs. (For the
completists who will otherwise correct me: it can also be found on the Flickering
Flame compilation.)

Radio KAOS.

Radio
KAOS (1987) is an even weirder one. It is built around a radio show
and features poppy songs with a typical eighties rock radio sound.
Although it sounds dated nowadays it is not half as bad as everyone
pretends. One of the good things is that it is a single album. Roger
Waters wanted to make it a double but this was vetoed against by the
powers that be. Some of these rejected demos were put on B-sides,
remember singles?, and I can only agree with those record executives.
The only thing that suffered from the weeding is the concept, Radio KAOS
is as odd and incomprehensible as one of those eerie second series Twin
Peaks episodes.

When you can’t sell new records, sell old ones, Waters must have thought
and The
Wall Live in Berlin (1990) was born. It’s The Wall all over again,
this time with guests, Bier und Bratwurst.

Not Amused at all

All this was just a general repetition for what Waters considers his
magnum opus. When a colleague at work told me, 25 years ago, that the
latest Waters record had a lot of explosions, I was not impressed at
all. A record is not judged by the amount of sound effects, especially
not when they interfere with the music. Amused
To Death sounds as if a piano player is playing in the far corner of
a crowded restaurant and all you hear is the rhubarby mumbling of the
people, the clashing of cutlery, falling plates, waiters taking
orders... Many will disagree but Amused to Death (1992) is Waters
equivalent of Battle
for the Planet of the Apes, it even has got a monkey on its
fart-smelly cover. That record has all the tricks Waters is famous for:
over the top shouting, tracks that are repeated over several parts,
lists instead of lyrics and the drowning of the melody under a layer of
sound effects… If Waters sings about a nuclear attack, you can bet your
ass there will be missiles wooshing through your surround system for the
next three minutes.

Amused to Death.

People might think I hate Waters, but this is not really the case. He
genuinely surprised me with his In
The Flesh tour and the highlights of The Final Cut, Pros And Cons
and Amused to Death he brought there proves that Waters has some good
songs in him.

This introduction has been going on too long, it fucking starts to sound
like one of his albums, so we’ll skip his opera
(everyone did) and the few excellent (Hello,
I love you) and bad singles (Leaving
Beirut) he made over the years.

Did I tell you that Waters is a man of continuous repetition…

When you can’t sell new records, sell old ones, so Waters had another go
at The
Wall, basically a lip-synch show with a video screen the size of a
football field. For me this was the lowest point in his career despite
the fact that he sold over four million tickets to the masses. (Read
more at: Skeletons
from the Kloset.)

But now, after some 25 years, there is a new Roger Waters record, and
it's excellent.

Is This The Life We Really Want?

When We Were Young: a garbled introduction, taken from a Waters
interview or monologue that gradually becomes clearer to understand.
Personally it makes me think remotely of the Wish You Were Here radio
introduction. Pink Floyd has of course a tradition of ambient opening
tracks. Their last album had Things
Left Unsaid that started with (equally garbled) Rick Wright and
David Gilmour quotes, but borrowing is allowed among friends.

The intro segues into Déjà Vu that has been known since
25 September 2014 under the title Lay
Down Jerusalem (If I Had Been God) when he performed it at the
Russell Tribunal at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, in
support of the Palestinian people.

A certain president.

Luckily it is a far better opening song than What
God Wants was (on his previous rock album), although it is pretty
snotty to compare yourself with a deity. Waters would have been a pretty
solid Roman emperor, he seems to think of himself. Rogergula.

The song itself is wonderful and reminds me of the best of The Final Cut
with its piano and violin arrangement and some scarce sound effects that
for once don't ruin the song. Probably producer Nigel
Godrich is to thank for that. An anonymous source gave us the
following snippet of a dialogue between the artist and his producer.

Roger Waters: "How many explosions can I have?"Nigel
Godrich: "One."RW: "One per song, cool."NG:
"No, one in total."RW: "Only one? Can I have some fucks
then?"NG: "You can have as many fucks as you like."

(Despite the critique at several reviews and fora that there are too
many swearwords on the album, I could only count seven fucks.)

The Last Refugee starts as an uncomplicated love song and has
incredible beautiful and yet simple lines:

Show me the shy slow smile you keep hidden by warm brown eyes.

Waters proves that he is an excellent lyricist and singer, alternating
softly sung parts with pieces where he vainly tries to suppress his
anger. The atmosphere of the song and the way Waters sings it makes me
think of Johnny
Cash's Solitary
Man, that was an opus of withheld emotionalism (not only on this
song, by the way). Up till now we haven't heard a single guitar solo yet
and that can only be regarded as a good point. It seems that Waters has
finally got rid of Gilmour's shadow, whom he tried to replace in vain
with Eric
Clapton or Jeff
Beck. This is a hidden gem that grows on you with every session and
if you don't get a tear in your eyes, nothing will.

Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

Picture That has a Welcome
To The Machine rhythm just before Waters starts with a set of
'shopping list' lyrics, a trick he has used in his entire career and
that he will repeat here as well on several songs. Do not expect that
Roger pictures himself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and
marmalade skies, quite the contrary, in his imagination kids run around
with their hands on the trigger of a gun carefully avoiding wooden
legged Afghans. There are quite some Floydian references for the
perceptive fan, musically to Sheep
(and Welcome To The Machine) and lyrically to Wish
You Were Here that is sardonically linked to Guantánamo
Bay. Roger's voice sounds coarse and rough throughout the track but
the synthesizer sounds thin and the guitar doesn't snap to the beat. Not
a bad tune, but it has something lacking to make it really great. It may
be contradictory to what I wrote before but this track would have
benefited from the over-the-top grandeur that only a full Pink Floyd
treatment can give. Let's have some of Rick's Turkish
Delight, please. Unless it was Roger's or Nigel's wish to make it
sound as Thin Floyd. Still a fucking great skeleton of a song though,
with obvious nods to his musical past.

Broken Bones starts like one of those more intimate Final Cut
tracks (Southampton
Dock, Paranoid
Eyes) and has the default Waters screams whenever the refrain hits.
Great little folkie tune, with a certain Bob
Dylan feel, nothing more, nothing less, with a foul-mouthed Waters
who isn't afraid to express his opinion:

We cannot turn back the clockCannot go back in timeBut we can
say:Fuck you, we will not listen toYour bullshit and lies

The Final Cut.

Is This The Life We Really Want? Surely the message is of more
importance than the melody here, Waters acts almost as a beat poet. It
has Waters reciting a shopping list again, like the following strophe:

But believe it or not, it really works in the context of the song. Great
poetic track, with a sudden splash of surreal humour.

Bird In A Gale. When this track lifts off after the default TV
and radio samples, it turns into a Floydian Sheep-pastiche with Waters'
shouting his lines. There is a dog in the lyrics, hopefully not one of
those Gilmourian dogs
of war, and is that a cash register at the end or just some weird
machinery clicking away the moments that make up a dull day? Up till now
the flow of the record has just been perfect, although this track is, in
my opinion, of lesser quality. It simply tries to hard to mimic Floyd,
including the repeating echoes at each line, line, line, line, line...

A certain refugee.

The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, the six minutes track takes
longer as its subject as she is already finished off in the third line
of the song 'like a pearl crushed by a bulldozer'. A typical album
track, not really one we'll remember as being the highlight of this
album, but not bad either. A bit like Gilmour did on Rattle
That Lock with the throwaway song The
Girl In The Yellow Dress, but at least she managed to survive till
the end.

This one needs some extra attention to really get into and should
probably be listened to on its own. The lyrics are also quite hermetic
and if someone can explains me what it is really about, then thanks. The
last strophe is particularly moving with the I'm coming home, bit.
Perhaps if I give it some time, it could grow into a favourite. (But who
has time, nowadays, for that?)

Smell The Roses is the least original song of the album. It takes
its melody from Have
A Cigar, has a mad dog on a chain barking, an obscured
by clouds guitar at the interlude and a Floydian girlie choir. But
just because it sounds so familiar and is full of clichés it rapidly
grows into an earworm.

Wait For Her / Oceans Apart / Part Of Me Died. The
last song is a three-parter that has been given separate titles.

The first part undoubtedly is a poetic song about love (and for
perverted minds: lovemaking), but in the last strophe there suddenly is
a 'last fusillade' whatever that means. The lyrics are inspired by a
poem (with the same title) from Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish and some lines have been taken literally from the original (Wait
For Her by Mahmoud Darwish).

Songtitles.

Oceans Apart is a short, one strophe, musical bridge between part one
and three, making it clear that the woman he sings about is the love of
his life.

Part Of Me Died has Waters listing again, this time it's a collection of
his bad characteristics (or so it seems) that the woman he loves has
made disappear. It is a very introspective Waters who ends the record
with:

Bring me my final cigaretteIt would be better by far to die in her
armsThan to lingerIn a lifetime of regret

Roger Waters writing a dark love-song, who would ever guess that? It's
simple, it's dumb, but Roger Waters has finally proven again he still is
the pilot of the Pink Floyd airship.

I never thought I would come to this conclusion, but Is This The Life We
Really Want? is a fucking good Roger Waters record, the best since The
Final Cut if you ask me. Luckily it has a spit-ugly cover and almost
undecipherable lettering so I can still end this review on a grumpy note.